This was posted by George Kakekaspan, the band manager from Fort Severn First Nation, on his Facebook page….I was fortunate enough to get to know George while working on canoe restoration project there….I am so taken by George’s words I had to share them here:

One time, when I was young and trapping with my father, after getting back from school. I went on the land to learn as much as I could about traditional life of being a Cree. I learned alot that year about trapping every different fur bearing animals, how to hunt caribou, fish, etc. One time we were making a fire beside a lake and I started chopping branches off some trees and making markings. My dad asked me what I was doing and I told hm that I was making markings to let people know that this is our land and we were here. He looked at me and said "you have become a whiteman” and I watched him in the things he did everywhere we went afterwards. He would not take everything/animal from the area, he would ensure that they are some left to regenerate for future use. He did not kill everything that was there even though he could have He would not bother the earth and trees as much as he could, pick up all his waste and burned them, and left the land as pristine as the way it was when we got to each location. He tried not to disturb anything as much as he could. This is what I learned so, if you travel across our lands and think we are not using it, you are wrong, it means a true Cree warrior has been there.

Meegwetch George for these fine words….Fort Severn is indeed in good hands with folks like you in the community….as they say “To know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve come from.” Meegwetch again to George….

(Message edited by WoodNCanvas on August 27, 2012)

grncnuMemberPost Number: 245Registered: 08-2010

Posted on Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - 12:40 am:

thanks for sharing that woodncanvas. besides being something we should all aspire to, the statement amounts to a very evolved view of the world, beside which modern scientific views of reality look like an absurdly wrongheaded children's game...

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